Posts by Wellyboot

AWS says Britain needs more nuclear power to feed AI datacenter surge

Re: Yes, but then again, No.

Given that we're already importing near continuously 3-6GW of leccy, a couple of extra full fat reactor sites won't be short of customers regardless of the bit barns existing or not.

Dilettante dev wrote rubbish, left no logs, and had no idea why his app wasn't working

Re: Nuke from orbit

Poor code - just needs tweaking, this is a classic common decision process repeated across the IT world many times daily.

But this is from a Psychology department senior lecturer, are you certain you weren't being used as a problem test subject?

Qatar’s $400M jet for Trump is a gold-plated security nightmare

The VC25 is based on a 747-200 in the same way NASCAR racers are based on normal road cars - they only look similar.

Even if they were stock 747-200 models they've probably only done a small percentage value of the airframes designed flight cycles, taking over a decade building the replacements just shows how diabolically bad Boeing has become at doing bespoke work in house.

Re: And then there was 2

On board as well?

New SSL/TLS certs to each live no longer than 47 days by 2029

Re: Bad choice - it fails to understand the user outcome

Reverse course ? - not a chance in Hades. The obvious* solution is for everyone to move absolutely everything into the cloud and never have to worry our little heads about such complicated problems again because our personal terminals will be updated automagically every time they sniff a connection.

* to those running the clouds

Trump tariffs to make prices great – a gain

Re: Let buyguns be buyguns

Is the SEC still able to impartially investigate anyone who either sold or shorted a load of shares ahead of the tariff announcements?

Microsoft wouldn't look at a bug report without a video. Researcher maliciously complied

Upcoming MS Press release

The quantity of bug reports has dropped markedly over the last two quarters, customer feedback was instrumental in fine tuning MS internal processes to achieve this improvement in product quality.

Network edge? You get 64-bit Armv9 AI. You too, watches. And you, server remote management. And you...

Re: What's the time?

Owner : "Opening time"

AI wrist thingy: "Nearest open pub is..."

This might actually be useful !

Google binning SMS MFA at last and replacing it with QR codes

Your bank is correct, Bitcoin is a scam magnet and the #1* choice for criminal transactions.

You never really believed all this 'smart' gubbins from an advertising company was for your benefit?

*for suitcase and above sized cash transactions

SMS is an old easily subverted communication method and like a postcard can be read by third parties with ease.

Current end to end encryption is near uncrackable* and that's safe enough until it gets removed because governments decide they really want to read your messages.

* Well known TLAs will neither confirm nor deny...

Re: Selfie-Camera->Handmirror->Screen

No, there's a much simpler solution which also addresses the problem of flatlining smart phone sales, one phone to display the QR code and another phone for the App & camera*

You are now forced to live your life with double the entry costs but at least you'll have a spare life tracker.

*hideously expensive flexible phones might be able to shortcut this...

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

Re: I wish...

HP was a quality company once, that was before the Agilent spin-off & Compaq 'merger' happened.

I think Agilent took all the good technical staff & Compaq brought nothing useful.

That doesn't change the fact that his strip is on the mark with corporate life.

We don't actually have to like him, meet him, support his views or interact in any other way to enjoy the cartoons.

Re: it wos The Reg "wot won it,"

Also art grads are cheaper than tech grads

Odds of city-killer asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth creep upward

Re: But why?

Yes (it's very small) and yes for about half of the time.

Simple equivalence - look at aerial photos of large forests, can you see the squirrels?

Trump admin's purge of US cyber advisory boards was 'foolish,' says ex-Navy admiral

I think Caver_Dave was refering to humanity in general, there are many examples from many countries that fit the profile.

Rackspace moving some of its own workloads off VMware to address bigger Broadcom bills

The more you tighten your grip Tarkin Tan, the more star user systems will slip through your fingers.

You begged Microsoft to be reasonable. Instead it made Copilot reason-able with OpenAI GPT-o1

Re: I'm Free!

Don't sell yourself short :)

Asteroid as wide as 886 cans of spam may hit Earth in 2032

Let him build a golf resort in your country and you'll be his biggliest buddy :)

8 Mton isn't far off the crowd pleasers that sat atop the Titan-II or SS18 ICBMs from the '60s, goodnight to anything standing within a couple of dozen miles.

Re: Astroid Catastrophe Monitoring Equipment

I'd want to know an accurately calculated impact site before making that decision.

Boom's XB-1 jet nails supersonic flight for first time

Re: 80 passengers?

That depends on where you draw the line. People are environmentally unacceptable, breathing out all that CO₂ 24 hours a day.

It's the one with the built in KO₂ rebreather.

Re: 80 passengers?

Indeed, You could argue the entire R&D effort since the 1800s was needed to provide the Apollo program starting point.

Re: 80 passengers?

Yes, the Concorde project was well under way before TSR-2 was canned. The afterburning Olympus (By Bristol out of R-R¹) was picked for Concorde due to it being the most powerful domestic engine available on either side of the channel and also was already being developed with super cruise capability in the TSR-2. Concorde & TSR-2 being both Government funded basically allowed pushing the latest military engine design into a commercial airliner to (a) save a vast pile of development cash and (b) make it a viable proposition only four years after the first transtlantic jet flights! (Comet-4 & 707 in 1958²)

You're also correct with the Marine & Static implementations, these were in parallel development with the aircraft engines because gas turbines can directly power anything previously using boiler+steam turbine sets plus they could go from cold start to full power in a fraction of the time.

¹ Bristol & SNECMA collaborated on Concorde engine development, before R-R bought out Bristol.

² Piston engined airliners were still carrying freight transatlantic in 1962.

Google Maps to roll out Trump-approved Denali and Gulf of Mexico rebrands

What's in a name...

The sea between England & France is the English channel to most of the world.

The French call it La Manche & almost nobody cares.

Musk torches $500B Stargate AI plan, Altman strikes back

Re: great news

Did it say 'how' they were better prepared?

It may include providing a handful of hyper egos to distract attention.

Trump nukes 60 years of anti-discrimination rules for federal contractors

Indeed, and being a very competent general with probably the best army in Europe he must have scared the neighbours silly in case he resorted to the standard English unifying tactic - invade France.

He could just appoint another half dozen to get the result he wants, I don't believe there's a hard limit on numbers.

The Parliament Act* is there to ensure that bills passed by the elected Commons cannot be blocked or radically changed by the unelected Lords. It's there to guarantee that elected members have the final say.

Blair's fox hunting law was passed with a large majority by the Commons, the Lords sent it back with amendments designed to gut most of the provisions, after it became clear that the Lords did not want to play ball he invoked the Parliament Act.

*invoked only about a dozen times since 1911

Parliament can be closed without it being asked because we simply don't want them voting extensions to their term of office. Cromwell for that very reason* shut it down to become a dictator in 1653.

Since the restoration, (in a very British compromise), Parliament is sovereign apart from the ability to decide when there has to be an election, that decision resides with the monarch who has for the last few hundred years acted on the advice of the PM.

*Cromwells actions are a really clear warning about power & corruption.

Re: "The UK PM absolutely can force through any legislation"

If the PM has the votes needed then that in itself IS parliamentary approval even if undisclosed ‘arrangements’ were made to facilitate the result.

The Churchillian quote on democracy ‘...Worst form of government apart from all those other forms that have been tried...’ will always ring true until we can find a way of selecting honest people capable of rational & critical thinking for the job.

China claims major fusion advance and record after 17-minute Tokamak run

AI will help because it will also be working correctly in 20 year time

UK aims to fix government IT with help from AI Humphrey

how long? .. Just as soon as they can come up with a reason to spend billions (again) on ID while not having the cash for things people actually want...

I await developments

The civil service will have already spotted that this will be used to remove them from the decision making process entirely.

I feel some ‘unforeseen circumstances’ will be arising to scupper this in the near future as the implementation process winds it way through Whitehall.

BT unplugs plans to turn old cabinets into EV chargepoints

Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

Market economics - if all purchasers indicate the price they are willing to pay, the price asked will never fall below that required to occupy the current supply capacity (starting with the deepest pockets)

Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

>>There are only 95 motorway services in the UK, yet somehow it works.<<

That's because you only need to have your wallet reamed once by the motorway fuel costs before learning to start every long trip with a full tank and then finding supermarket fuel stations if you need them.

Re: the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge surrounding EVs

Why not a simple contactless card payment method?

Obviously it don't provide the important data collection opportunity that a phone sniffing app can do.

IBM swoops in to rescue UK Emergency Services Network after Motorola shown the door

They'll subcontract it back to Motorola, who else knows how it works...

Re: What about non 4G?

Yes I'd go with non 4G protocols as a serious option from an engineering viewpoint. How much has technology changed during the last decade while we all waited for nothing to appear.

Successive governments eyeing the cash from 3/4/5G spectrum auctions were not inclined to add anything about making the thing work in an emergency, that would reduce the cash bids.

Re: Solar / EMP events

I think the pigeons will be very confused for a few mins before getting back to normal and I've no idea how they'll handle this in flight?

As for the power issue, write this into the license terms 'Will operate off mains power for a minimum of 24 hours' at whatever minimum capacity is required.

Cheap or Resilient - pick one.

Re: WTF do IBM know about emergency services radio?

Indeed. The PTT requirement changes the cell/phone 'tracking' system from the very low bandwidth regular update ping* into a permanent higher bandwidth open channel. This is a case where a 95% fit is no good when the other 5% is the killer application requirement!

The Government really needs to give up and just admit that replacing the Motorola bespoke emergency system requires another bespoke system more akin to military communications even if this ends up with a dedicated cell network.

*needed to immediately route incoming calls to the correct cell instead of spamming the entire network looking for 'fred' - that doesn't scale well with 10s of millions of handsets.

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Re: "My ISP already knows how old I am"

While you are correct with your statement - the O.P. Point 6 said 'accused' and JG pointed out the legal position pre conviction.

In the UK we have accusations to be proved correct not denunciations to be proved wrong.

Apple solves broken news alerts by turning off the AI

Re: Why?

Add value for You - none.

Allow the AI creators* to change independent news output - Priceless

* a most trustful philanthropic group /sarc.

Euro-cloud Anexia moves 12,000 VMs off VMware to homebrew KVM platform

Re: Get rich quick

What to do next?

Build a datacentre and hold on to all those ex Broadcom customers :)

Fining Big Tech isn't working. Make them give away illegally trained LLMs as public domain

Re: Alternative solution

An excellent example of showing that to have real power all you need is money in vast amounts*, the movie industry using it to stifle competition by 'encouraging' laws in exactly the opposite way to IT companies that just ignore laws and stall court cases until fines are a balance sheet footnote and any 'ban on specific activity' has little relevance.

* Politicians looking for donations (and other perks) will appear with complementary agendas to aid these endeavours.

Axiom Space shuffles space station assembly sequence – to get it standalone sooner

Re: European space station

Is that decision being made by someone who will end up going there?

Re: Relook at

I like how you sneaked in learnings instead of leveraging lessons :)

BOFH: Printer's festive bips herald a merry mystery for the Boss's budget

Bahjis are pre-ordered on the same account.

Pubs will happily cater for good customers.

With credit statements filling up with micro-payments how many would notice a random few quid every so often AND then chase down where it happened?

US reportedly mulls TP-Link router ban over national security risk

Adding you own open source software removes greatly reduces the chance that you're compromised at the OS level which will help keep non nation state level snoopers away BUT...

As was shown recently with Hezbollah pagers & walkie-talkies all going bang, compromising hardware is just as relevant and there's nothing you can do if 'special' additions have been made to any of the chip designs before they hit the FAB.